I agree if you model people as along some Pareto frontier of perfectly selfish to perfectly (direct) utilitarian, then in no point on that frontier does offsetting ever make sense. However, I think most people have, and endorse, having other moral goals.
For example, a lot of the intuition for offsetting may come from believing you want to be the type of person who internalizes the (large, predictably negative) externalities of your actions, so offsetting comes from your consumption rather than altruism budget.
Though again, I agree that perfect utilitarians, or people aspiring to be perfect utilitarians, should not offset. And this generalizes also to people whose idealized behavior is best described as a linear combination of perfectly utilitarian and perfectly selfish.
I agree if you model people as along some Pareto frontier of perfectly selfish to perfectly (direct) utilitarian, then in no point on that frontier does offsetting ever make sense. However, I think most people have, and endorse, having other moral goals.
For example, a lot of the intuition for offsetting may come from believing you want to be the type of person who internalizes the (large, predictably negative) externalities of your actions, so offsetting comes from your consumption rather than altruism budget.
Though again, I agree that perfect utilitarians, or people aspiring to be perfect utilitarians, should not offset. And this generalizes also to people whose idealized behavior is best described as a linear combination of perfectly utilitarian and perfectly selfish.